Poll: Youth interest in midterms sinks

A new poll holds some grim omens for Democrats in this year’s midterm elections: young voters have dwindling interest in the November races, and the ones who do plan to cast ballots are more likely to vote Republican.

According to the poll, conducted by Harvard’s Institute of Politics and released Tuesday, just 23 percent of voters aged 18 to 29 say they will definitely vote in the midterms. That’s an 11 percent drop from the last time the survey was taken — five months ago — and the lowest recorded number since the poll was established more than a decade ago.

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Democrats, who are waging an uphill battle to protect their Senate majority and to win control of the House of Representatives, are trying to mobilize the coalition of young, minority and female voters that helped President Barack Obama win a second term in 2012.

But midterm elections are typically dominated by a group of older and whiter voters, making the challenge a steep one for the party, which has been on the defensive thanks in part to Republican attacks on Obamacare and a flood of spending by outside conservative groups.

According to the poll, interest among the so-called “millennials” is even lower than at a similar point in the 2010 midterms, when Democrats suffered a blowout. According to Harvard IOP’s February 2010 survey, 31 percent of voters under 30 said they would definitely be voting.

The falling youth interest in the elections correlated with their rising cynicism about politicians and declining trust in government institutions — the latter reaching historic lows for the survey.

Since last spring’s poll, young voters’ trust in the presidency fell from 39 percent to 32 percent; trust in the U.S. military fell below a majority for the first time from 54 percent to 47 percent; and trust in the Supreme Court fell from 40 to 36 percent.

“It’s been clear for some time now that young people are growing more disillusioned and disconnected from Washington,” John Della Volpe, the director of the survey, said in a statement accompanying the results. “There’s an erosion of trust in the individuals and institutions that make government work — and now we see the lowest level of interest in any election we’ve measured since 2000.”

Of the young people who are interested in turning out in November, more are likely to pull the lever for Republicans than Democrats. Of the voters who backed GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012, 44 percent said they will definitely vote; of the voters who supported Obama, just 35 percent said they would cast ballots.

The poll also found that among the youth surveyed: self-identified conservatives are 10 points more likely to vote than liberals (32 percent to 22 percent); men are 9 points more likely to vote than women (28 percent to 19 percent); and young whites, at 27 percent, are more likely to vote than African Americans (19 percent) and Hispanics (19 percent).

There is a bright spot for Democrats, however. Since the last Harvard IOP poll was conducted five months ago, Obama’s approval rating has risen to 47 percent from 41 percent, which had been his lowest number recorded in the survey.

The poll of 3,058 youth voters was conducted between March 22 and April 4, and has a margin of error of 1.8 percentage points.